Lunar Photography

Many of the non-NASA lunar photos in this book were taken by the author. The equipment used was selected to reflect typical sized telescopes owned by a majority of backyard observers. 80 mm to 130 mm refractors on equatorial mounts were utilized, with a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera. The majority of the author’s photos were taken using a 102 mm Stellarvue 102ED mounted on a Celestron CG-4 equatorial mount, with a few photos from a 130 mm aperture Brandon refractor mounted on a computer-driven Vixen equatorial mount. A Canon Rebel XTi DSLR camera was used with either the prime focus technique or Barlow projection technique with a Proxima 1.5x Barlow, in combination with various camera-to-telescope adaptors. The goal was to present the reader a view of the Moon through a typical hobbyist’s telescope at low and medium magnifications.

The reader will notice that many of the photos were taken when the Moon was not full. The Moon, being a three-dimensional object, casts beautiful shadows dur­ing its less-than-full phases. The full Moon tends to be drab and two dimensional, both in photographs and with the naked eye peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, because the fully illuminated surface casts no shadows. So, for eye appeal and the logical fact that there are more days that the Moon is not in its full phase, many of the locator photographs in this book were taken during the first quarter and gibbous phases of the Moon.